Benchmarking Your Performance Analytics Capabilities

How is your organization using performance analytics?

9 February 2017

Given the increasing pressure on local governments to use data and information to guide decision making, Kevin C. Desouza at Arizona State University recently conducted a series of interviews of city managers and staff in various roles, many of which were Alliance for Innovation members, to better understand how local governments are using data to increase operational efficiencies, tackle complex problems and develop innovative programs to address real challenges.

The first phase of this project resulted in the development of a maturity model identifying the stages an organization progresses through to achieve increasing sophistication in the execution of performance analytics. The article released on February 8, 2017, outlines how local government managers can use this model to identify ways to move up the maturity scale and improve their operations.

With the completion of Phase 1, we will soon deploy an online survey that will measure the maturity of local governments on various elements (e.g. data management, metrics) of performance analytics. This survey will allow the research team to benchmark local governments on performance analytics based on their features (e.g. cities versus counties, rural versus urban, etc.).

Alliance for Innovation members will have the unique opportunity to be a part of the groundbreaking work.

The ultimate goal of this project is to provide actionable information to local governments managers encouraging better management and utilization of data across departments. Local governments that participate in this project will be given their maturity score, the score of communities like them, and the overall maturity score of all AFI members participating in the study.